


Exsanguinate

by Steals_Thyme (Liodain)



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Codependency, Gratuitous Vampires, Kink Meme, M/M, Weird Shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-24
Updated: 2009-09-24
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:00:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liodain/pseuds/Steals_Thyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan is bitten (and bites).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exsanguinate

"Fourth one this week," Nite Owl says grimly, turning the corpse over. It's a working girl this time; her eyes unseeing for all their wideness, and red-smeared lips shockingly bright against pale skin. His shadow dances across her, back and forth, sickly green and yellow as neon flashes overhead.

There's bruises on her neck and shoulder, around torn, swollen flesh. No blood, though, save for a spatter that rusts the lace of her top. There should be more, a _lot_ more – should have been more with the other three bodies, too. Pooled around them in a lake, darkly reflecting the polluted sky.

Their throats were ripped out, and it's serious, this. Brutal in a way they haven't seen before, and thoroughly, grotesquely bizarre. Dan's mind keeps throwing out imagery from low-budget, late-night horror movies and apocryphal urban myths that never seem to die out from generation to generation, and that is really not helping.

(..._he steals like a molten shadow through the dark heart of the city._...)

A few feet away, Rorschach grunts. He's rooting through the garbage collected in the gutter and against the wall, ostensibly looking for clues, but Dan knows he's keeping his distance because the body makes him uncomfortable. He's not afraid of violence, never flinches at the crunch of bone and cartilage under his hands, but these women set him on edge. His level of uneasiness seems inversely proportional to the amount of clothing they have on.

Dan wonders about him, sometimes.

"Anything?" he asks, raising his voice over the buzzing neon.

Silence. Dan looks up, finds he is alone. No – there, in the slatted shadows beneath the fire escape.

(_...lives in a dark shroud of his own making, eyes just slip right over him – unless he wants you to see..._)

"Rorschach? You find something?"

He's suddenly backed up against the wall, and his yelp of alarm is suffocated by a hand clamping over his mouth; bare and dark, creaking like leather and tasting of old, old earth.

-

He leaves Daniel poring over the body, as though he can scry the prostitute's last moments from her clouded, accusing eyes. It sickens him to watch his partner lavish her with such attention, even as he knows he is being irrational. Daniel is simply looking for clues, and those stabs of possessiveness are just needy, damaged Walter scrabbling at the inside of his mask. Pathetic Walter, who thinks he'd be rejected in favor of a dead whore.

It seems prudent to investigate the intersecting alleyway, nonetheless.

There's blood here. Just a little, the smallest spatters of red against the torn edge of a moldering poster, slowly curdling a deep brown. And there, half-hidden in deep shadows, slumped on burst garbage bags—

"Another," he whispers. And louder, "Nite Owl!"

Silence. Rorschach retraces his steps, footfalls echoing as he whips around the corner, back to the first exsanguinated body, back to—

Daniel.

His shoulders are pressed up against the brickwork, back arched away in an elegant curve, hips thrust forward as he strains on the balls of his feet – an impossible stance to hold, and why would he be doing that, why—

His mouth is open and he's gasping as if he can't breathe. His fingers flutter weakly at his own neck, the cowl stripped away – and something must be wrong, for him to have unmasked _here_ – and for a moment, it's as if he's pinned by some unknowable force; the way his cape falls and his hands can't quite seem to settle where he wants them to, and he's making an noise, a little like pain and a lot like—

There is something very, very wrong, and Rorschach realizes he's been standing transfixed as his partner writhes and moans (and he's hard, suddenly; can feel the heavy throb between his thighs) and it's so shameful he could throw up. He whines low in his throat, a desperate keen of confusion and arousal – it's louder than he meant it to be, but it's like taking a sledgehammer to glass. Something breaks, cracks like lightning and he can almost smell the ozone, can finally move.

Daniel crumples to the ground, chest heaving as he gulps in air.

Rorschach skids to his knees next to him, pinstripes shredding on the rough concrete. He holds him up by the shoulder as he begins to slump forward, "Daniel."

A shaking hand covers his own. "Suh–stopped him. Thank you."

He sounds terrible, voice hoarse and wheezing, and he looks pale and bruised. Delirious too? Rorschach frowns, tilts Daniel's head back in order to check his eyes, but as he leans over to unfasten the goggles, he sees the blood marring the smooth column of his throat.

He touches the ruptured flesh with shaking hands, and watches Daniel lose his tenuous grip on consciousness.

-

He remembers everything with razor-edged clarity; the gnarled bony fingers, the gaunt face bearing down on him, skin wizened and shriveled and picked out in meticulous detail by his goggles' night-vision. The eyes. Unworldly and bright as teeth tear at his skin and an alien sensation prickles up his spine, paralyzes him in a shuddering sensation caught between base animal pleasure and a primal, nameless terror.

(_...drinks long from his victims and then tears out their throat – they're better off dead, than to become like him. He does know mercy_...)

But none of that detail matters, not when it makes no sense. Rorschach insists he saw nothing, says there was nobody else there, but with a fervor that suggests he saw _something_. It's not like his partner to hold out on such critically important details. Not like him at all.

If Dan didn't know better, he'd say he was scared.

He wouldn't be the only one.

It's been four days, and he still feels like hell; he's bundled up in his comforter, trying to sink right into his couch to keep warm. His heating is cranked up to maximum, his fire is on, and he has a warm mug of coffee cradled in his hands but he's _still cold_.

"Could be lack of sleep," Rorschach says, unbuttoning another layer – his uniform is gradually migrating to a neatly-folded pile on the coffee table. "In conjunction with shock, immune system compromised; perhaps influenza."

It's the same theory he's presented at least a dozen times over the past few hours, and the novelty of him actually being in Dan's house and not just lurking at the threshold of his kitchen is rapidly wearing off. His insistence is far from reassuring.

"No, I've had flu before. This isn't the flu," he snaps. He knows, _knows_ what the problem is, but his mind keeps dismissing it as ridiculous or telling him he's crazy or worst of all, shying away from it altogether. There's no way he can come out and say it, so he chooses to gripe instead. "God, I'm freezing, Rorschach. Are you sure the heating is all the way up?"

"Ehn," Rorschach replies, shrugging off his pinstripe vest. His dress shirt is almost transparent with sweat, and Dan is fascinated by the play of pink skin and muscle beneath. "Quite certain."

He gulps down the last of his coffee. It's sugared to oblivion, enough to make his teeth ache, but he's thirsty as hell and the viscous liquid feels good over his tongue. The warmth of it pools soothingly in his stomach.

He's starting to feel like he had some kind of psychotic break in the alleyway. Probably would be happier to believe that, at least he could get some sleep. As it is, every time he closes his eyes the stench of foul breath fills his nose, and he can taste damp earth under his tongue. His body is clinging to a sense-memory of dry thumbs, desiccated and wrinkled and pressing into the hollow under his chin, and a bittersweet agony that leaves his pulse pounding thunderously, coiling heat in his belly as though he—

(_...become like him..._)

"_Daniel!_"

Dan blinks, gaping at the note of panic resonating plainly in Rorschach's voice. He's kneeling next to him, hands on his upper arms and he's so _hot_... Dan squeezes his eyes shut, opens them again. "Huh?"

"Are you with me?"

"I— yeah, uh. What. What happened to my coffee?"

Rorschach exhales frustratedly. "Drank it, ten minutes ago. Been staring into space since then."

Dan shivers violently; the comforter has slipped away and he can feel every eddy of cold air in the room. "Help me," he says, hearing his own voice crack. He grabs Rorschach's wrists and tugs the man against him, trying to pull heat away from him and into his own chill body. "What's wrong with me?"

(_...often don't know what is wrong, until it is too late..._)

Rorschach squirms, all bony elbows and knees and panicked breathing. "Daniel, Dan—"

His blood is aflame, coursing through his body in a vital, ferocious rhythm. Dan can hear it, can hear his heart beating so fast it's making him giddy, can _see_ it, the vibration of his pulse points, tremors at his wrists, shuddering through the mask at his neck, swelling between his legs and this is _so wrong_—

"You're so warm," Dan moans. "Help me be warm."

He noses into Rorschach's neck, presses his tongue flat to that quivering skin. A gasp wrenches from his partner, and it's close to the most desperate thing he's ever heard. Rorschach tugs up the mask with his thumb and his mouth comes down on Dan's, raw with dread and rough with inexperience, and Dan can taste his blood where his chapped lips have split.

Taste.

(..._too late..._)

Him.

They're pressed against each other and the heat radiating off him is intoxicating, and the roiling waves of arousal pull them both under. Dan is lapping at Rorschach's mouth, tongue working to find every last drop of him. He's been so _thirsty_, but each shudder and bitten-back whimper and trace of copper is like fine whiskey, searing the back of his throat and making his mouth water but it's not quite enough, not quite—

"Need you to—" Dan whispers. He strokes his hand down Rorschach's back, over his thigh. "Want you—"

Rorschach becomes quiescent, muscles still trembling. He pushes himself up, arms either side of Dan's head, and the inkblots are moving in patterns that Dan has never, ever seen before. His voice is husky, tight with heavy restraint, but all he says is, "Daniel." All he ever says is—

But they are moving again, hands fervently grasping at each other, pulling away clothes until his skin is leeching heat from Rorschach's fevered body, and Rorschach is leaning over him, is above him, is inside of him and burning like a pyre, glowing motes and floating ash and always that vital rhythm.

He's leaning over to bury his face in the crook of Dan's shoulder, and it's too much when his cheek rubs against the wound on Dan's throat, hot and slick with sweat; he throws back his head and sucks in air and _wails_. Rorschach jerks against him in alarm, and Dan has to wrap his legs around his waist and grab the back of his neck to stop him pulling away, and—

The world dims, and his mouth is suddenly working against freckled skin, teeth sinking into firm flesh and it's not Dan who's wailing now.

Blood is filling his mouth and it tastes like a violation, unforgivable. He's peripherally aware of a release, but it's all mixed up with singing, pounding red and Rorschach begging, _begging_ for something.

Reality reasserts itself blindingly, all rushing noise and urgent breath and a quiet plea in his ear, and Dan realizes he's breathing through his nose.

(_...mercy..._)

He releases the flesh held between his teeth carefully, delicately, tongue catching the heat that swells up as he withdraws. He presses his lips over bruises that are already forming around torn skin, and Rorschach shudders hard against him as he softly mouths at the spot over and over. He isn't sure if his partner knows that it's an apology, not until narrow fingers hold his face still, brush his cheek in a way that says _enough,_ and _I forgive you_ and just perhaps, _what have we done._

-

They move like molten shadows in the darkest parts of the city, and if they are a little quicker than they used to be, nobody mentions it. If their hands feel a little cooler when they fasten around the neck of a gutter punk, it's not often they live to tell the tale.

And if nobody ever catches the killer that the papers sensationalize as the _Throat Ripper_, well, even heroes aren't infallible.


End file.
